Shades of Grey
by YL
Summary: Chapter 04 While He Was Sleeping: Forgive Me. [Rukia]
1. Shades of Grey

**Disclaimer: **Bleach is not mine. This is.

**Notes: **Is this considered drabble? The shortest thing I've ever written for a chapter I believe. I was listening to a song. And I suddenly had the urge to write this. Please read and Enjoy.

* * *

**Shades of Grey**

* * *

The world was black and white.

Or so I thought.

Till you came into my life, introducing your shades of grey.

You were still black and white. Utterly determined in your black kimono, white robe, black hair, white skin… one by one, the black and white mixes into shades of grey. One by one, the colors changed. I saw the darkness of your eyes turn into a blinding white and finally faded into grey. You were black and white, yet you were grey.

Who are you? I've forgotten how to live without the guilt. I've forgotten how to smile without the pain. I've forgotten how to cry without the anger. I've forgotten… a lot of things, till you came into my life, came in with your truth, your lies and your secrets, introducing your shades of grey.

Who am I? I can no longer go back to my black and white world. I have grown tired of pretending to be strong. I'm not. I thought I was, but I'm not. Not after you came here to capsize my world. I have grown tired of turning my back on the things I could do. I always did. But you showed me how I couldn't. I have grown tired of being carrying my guilt alone. I could not let go of the pain. And you took me into your arms, took my guilt away and taught me to forgive.

So slowly, slowly, your shades of grey became colors. The red of your thin lips, the blue of your fierce eyes, the pink of your pale skin… I've started to see the colors; the colors that belong to you, the colors that belong to me and the colors that belong to us.

And then, the colors disappeared, the shades of grey disappeared, leaving behind, once again, my black and white world. Shades of grey, my lovely shades of grey… why do you cry for me? If I close my eyes, will the shades of grey return when I open my eyes back? Will the silence become music, will the tears become dry and will the screams become laughter? I've forgotten, I've lost, these shades of grey.

I want the colors to return. I want my shades of grey to return. I want my black and white world to disappear. Shades of grey, my lovely shades of grey… don't cry alone. If you need to cry, return into my arms and shed those tears. And I will dry those tears. Because I want back my shades of grey. And turn it into colors once again.

Wait for me, my shades of grey. And don't cry for me. I'm coming to get you.

* * *

**- End -**

* * *

**Post-Chapter Notes: **Why shades of grey? I have no idea. Because it's sadder I guess. From black, to white, to grey... and finally, to a blossoming of colors. After re-reading, it just doesn't even seem that angsty. Just kind of... tired. Well, maybe still angsty. Ugh, I don't know! Ha...

I hope you enjoyed it despite it's length and contentless-ness (yeah, I always invent this kind of stupid words). Do drop a review if you like and thank you for spending some of your time to read this!

P.S. Those who reads my other stories... I'll try to cough up my chapters by this or next week. I have them already! Just not yet edited.:D Sorry for the wait. Busy. >.>

P.P.S. I edited the color of her eyes. I wrote "dark purple" at first, and as I was re-reading it, I wondered... When was her eyes ever purple! Haha... I must be going color blind.

P.P.P.S How many "P"s can I write? After what seal-chan said, I can't decide her eyes are purple or blue! What is aword for the color dark purplish blue? I'm so short on vocabulary!


	2. Forgetting

**Disclaimer: **Bleach is not mine. This is. And all these boring disclaimer things shall apply for all works in this collection.

**Notes:  
**I wrote this while I was listening to a song too, just as I did for Chapter 1, and to the same singer too! The content follows more or less to the meanings of the lyrics actually, but this isn't a songfic, well, since the song isn't even in English. For optimum conditions, read this listening to a slow song, tempo about 60 should be good, as I wrote it under such conditions!

Somehow I decided this "Shades of Grey" shall be my collection for contentless (invented word appears once again) and stand alone writings. (That's why I write "- END -" for the chapters in this collection, rather than my usual "- YL -" like for my other multichaptered stories)

So please Read and ENJOY!

**

* * *

**

Forgetting

* * *

Standing in that crowd with the joyous faces, the light-hearted goodbyes and the heartfelt wishes, I have never before felt more alone. Because standing in that crowd, you were smiling at me too. How could you look at me with such warm eyes and smile at me with such a blissful look, like you didn't know? But I smiled back, knowing that I have lost you, knowing that I have lost this brief happiness that I have found in you.

The beautiful colors that you showed me, shall once again fade into a painful black and white, because now I know; you are leaving me.

That day, as I watched your lips moved, forming those cruel words, time seemed to slow down to a never-ending loop and I just wanted to be deaf, to just for a moment, cover up my ears and not listen to the things you were saying. But I knew that right then, right there, as everything started to lose their colors, I had to let you go, because you had chosen to let me go.

I do not understand why, I cannot understand why, I do not want to understand why you could just walk away from me like this, never giving the real reason for leaving me behind.

Perhaps I have not shown enough, have not said enough and have not done enough?

Is that why you could just walk away, leave me and let me go?

Without as much as a second glance?

I do not understand, I cannot understand, though I pretend that I do. Perhaps, I do not want to understand.

If I could just pretend to forget, to put myself under a spell, perhaps it would hurt a little less. Each night, over and over again, my thoughts revolved around the things you did, the things I did, the things we did… and the things that didn't. And each night, over and over again, I lay sleepless in my bed, lonesome. In this room, where once again I sleep in solitude, I know that I will no longer see you, no longer hear you, no longer smell you; it feels so cold, nearly forlorn. For years I have slept alone, so how could you, in just a few mere weeks, have changed my nights so irreversibly? I want to forget, to forget your face, to forget your sound, to forget your scent, because I understand, I can no longer return to that beautiful past that I have once shared with you.

I'll keep moving, I'll keep trying, I'll keep living, in hope that another happiness will just be waiting for me around the corner. But I know that I'll never find another equivalent happiness, another equivalent you, another equivalent us. Never again will I hear the familiar beep of your phone; never again will I run along the streets with you reassuringly by my side; never again will I have your strength to hold me when I fall. Never again.

And now the streets have grown so silent, so empty, so desolate.

In this isolated street, I stand, all by myself, wanting to forget these memories, wanting to get used to not having you, wanting to find a new kind of happiness. And more than anything else, wanting the unrelenting rain to wash all these tiring emotions away. Because everything between you and me had fallen apart, died and ended, when you abandoned me.

I did not speak, I could not speak, I did not want to speak, because I was so afraid, so afraid that even if I had spoken, you would not have heard me and in the end, nothing would have changed.

Maybe I should have said something, anything, but what was I to say?

I could not find the words then.

And I still cannot find the words now.

So I can only hide my anger, my sorrow and my pain, behind this mask, that was brought down by you, but ironically, brought up once again, _also_ by you.

If I could just pretend to forget, to put myself under a spell and perhaps to grow a little smarter, then I would not, each night, over and over again, lay sleepless in my bed, lonesome. In this world that I no longer share with you, I will no longer see eternity, no longer glimpse that flitting sense of everlastingness that you have shown me with your gentle smile, tender touch and loving eyes. I've lost all that, because you have said goodbye, because you have deserted me, because you are now at a place I cannot reach, cannot see and cannot be. If I close my eyes now, pretend to forget and put myself under a spell, will I, one day, really learn to forget?

To forget the memories, to forget the feelings, to forget…

…_you_?

**

* * *

**

- END –

* * *

<


	3. While He Was Sleeping: You Don't Love Me

Please Read and Enjoy!

**Note:** Abarai Renji

* * *

**While He Was Sleeping:  
****_You Don't Love Me_**

* * *

I think I understand that you don't love me. You don't love me. Grappling with that fact for over decades, it never got to me, till I see how you watch him night after night, as he lays sleeping in that bed. I see the look you would never use on me. I see the tears you would never shed for me. I see the love that you would never give to me. You give it all to him.

I love you in ways you never knew. And I've told you that I love you a million times. A million times that you have never heard.

I said "I love you" when we joined the shinigami academy. I said "I love you" when I told you to join the Kuchiki family. I said "I love you" when I took you back to Soul Society. I said "I love you" when I watched you wait for death. I said "I love you" when I held you in my arms and protected you. I am saying "I love you", even while I stand here and watch you sit quietly by his bedside, punishing yourself for the sins that you've never made. And I'm still saying that I love you, though you've never heard me once.

All these years, you have never heard me once.

Yet you hear him.

I think I understand that you don't love me. You don't love me at all. I want to give you everything, your happiness is all I want you to have, but sometimes, it hurts. It hurts to know that you do not see my pain. It hurts too much.

And you never knew how cruel you could be. You showed me the bits and pieces of joy that I never knew, but because you showed them to me, you took away my everything. Because you were my everything. And you can no longer be.

But I still love the cruel woman that you are.

And so I am a broken man. Because bit by bit, I realize that I am not worthy of you. Not before, not now, not ever, no matter what I do. I give you all, but you see none of the effort, none of the struggle, none of the anguish that I've put myself through, just so that one day, I may be worthy of you. All you see is him. You choose him, a boy you barely know, over me, the man who have waited for you for over a century.

And so I remain a broken man.

I understand that you don't love me. Yes, you don't love me. But it's all right. I'm learning to give you up. Or I'm learning to pretend that I can give you up. Because no matter how much I think I can give to you, I will never be able to give you enough. So you can never love me.

I'm not worthy of you. So you can never love me.

I'll howl at the moon.

And he'll be the only who can reach you.

The "you" that I will never be able to attain.

I understand that. So I'm learning to give you up. Or pretending to.

Because I know that you don't love me. You really don't love me. And you never will.

Fate never meant to let you be mine.

I love you.

I'm still saying that I love you. Because I really do.

But you don't need to know. And you never will.

And you never will.

* * *

**- YL -**

* * *

**Post-Chapter Notes:**  
I love torturing Renji. + Evil Cackle +

And I need sleep...

And pls pretend that while Ichigo was recuperating in that one week in SS, he sleeps quietly in a hospital bed at night. Patients need their rest. : )


	4. While He Was Sleeping: Forgive Me

This has been sitting on my computer for a while. So... Please read and enjoy!

**Note: **Kuchiki Rukia

* * *

**While He Was Sleeping:  
****_Forgive Me_**

* * *

You are alive.

You are alive.

You are alive.

I told you not to follow me. A fool I would have been to even believe that you would listen to me.

But you are alive. And that's all I need to know.

I cannot understand why.

Why did you come for me?

Why did you throw away your everything, to choose this path that I have shown to you? Why did you give up your normal life that you would have gotten back, just to save me? Why did you choose to protect me, the person who have stolen everything from you in that brief encounter between the dead and the living?

You should have turned your back on me. Turned away and went back to the world you had belonged to. Yet you took this route, this route marred with death and bloodshed, a route that a child like you should have never been allowed to see.

I am humiliated as the tears fall, knowing that you'll never understand the guilt within me. The guilt that I'll never tell you and the guilt that will never be erased.

I do not deserve to be saved.

Yet you refused to give up on me. And now I sit here ashamed, ashamed that I have wanted to give up, believing that there is nothing else that I am holding on to, believing that there are no longer regrets in my life, believing that I have lived the way that I wanted to.

But I lied.

Do you know that as I watched the tranquil red and gold of the setting sun, I just wanted to sit beside you at the roof top and quietly watch the clouds roll by? Do you know that as I listened to the birds making their merry tunes outside, I just wanted to wake up to the sounds of your alarm clock and listen to the morning family bickering that inevitably followed? Do you know that as I hummed to myself in the deafening silence of the solitary tower, I just wanted to hear you singing quietly to the tunes you hear in your headphone, thinking that no one could hear you?

Choosing death was just an excuse to release me from the pain. To release me from all those things that I do not wish to give up on. To release me from the memories of you.

So if you are not sleeping, would you glare at me in mild irritation as I hum some of your favorite tunes, songs which words I do not even know?

I know I should not be having these thoughts. For all these thoughts are worthless to me as a shinigami, as a proud member of the royal family, as a person who belongs to a different world. So I have no courage to look you in the eye, in case I reveal all these feelings to you. I'm not strong. I'm not strong at all, although I pretend to be. So I cannot let you see my tears, my sorrow, my weakness, my regret and the thousand other thoughts that I do not even have the right to having.

So if you are not sleeping, what would you do when you look at the me that I've now become?

I do not wish to know. I do not have the courage to find out.

Because I know that you will do everything in your power to save me again. And again. And again.

Even if it kills you.

So forgive me.

I do not deserve forgiveness, but please forgive me.

Forgive me for all the wrong that I have done to you.

Forgive me for bringing you to a world filled with bloodshed. Forgive me for taking away your normalcy. Forgive me for being weak.

And most of all, forgive me for loving you.

* * *

**- YL -**

**

* * *

**

**Post-Chapter Notes: **I miss all of you.


End file.
